3. Section on fires from Bayview and Lakeview

No doubt the largest and most devastating fire season was in 1910.  The entire Northwest was tinder dry that summer.  The news indicated that there had been no rain after April and by August the vegetation in the forests was parched.  According to reports from Bill Greeley of the Bureau of Forests, there were three thousand fires burning by early August throughout District I, which ran from eastern Washington to South Dakota, and less than one man per fire to put them out.

Then in a matter of two days and nights beginning on August 20th, fire raced across northern Idaho and western Montana burning three million acres of virgin timber.  Gale force winds added to the terror and fanned the fires into an inferno.  Blazes started from any number of sources – from field burning, to sparks from passing railroad engines, to lightning strikes, or ashes from a cigar, and even arson. They started in numerous places and then joined together.  Some contend that these fires were the largest ever experienced in the U.S.  The sky turned yellow, and smoke was evident hundreds of miles to the east.

Numerous books and accounts have been written detailing the fires that raged through the Silver Valley towns of Wallace and Kellogg.  The name of Ranger Edward Pulaski became famous when he saved the lives of fire fighters by taking refuge in the War Eagle Mine.  Perhaps those areas have received coverage because there were so many lives lost and tales of heroism to report.  However the forests surrounding Lake Pend Oreille were also permanently scarred by the fires in August of 1910, and that story has gone unnoticed.

There were no lookouts in the mountains at this time.  The Forest Service had been recently organized in 1905 with Gifford Pinchot as its first director.  By 1910 there were 150 national forests.  One, the Pend Oreille National Forest organized in 1908, stretched throughout northern Idaho.  A limited staff of rangers was available.  The majority of fire fighters were land and business owners protecting their property and that of their neighbors.  City dwellers and even bums of the streets of Spokane were pressed into service.

Fires in the vicinity of the lake can be traced through newspaper accounts carried in issues of Sandpoint’s Pend d’Oreille Review.  In the August 2^nd paper indications were that the recent fires were under control and the fighting force had been reduced to 300 men.  The headline read, “Fire Fighters Have Respite – Grave Danger Still Remains.”  According to the article, 50 to 60 emergency patrolmen were placed in the district, and additional equipment was being shipped from Missoula.

The story changed on Saturday and Sunday, August 20-21.  A writer for the Pend D’Oreille Review described the events in the following issue which came out on August 26th: 

“While Bonner county has no such sad story to relate as its neighboring county of Shoshone as a result of the visitation of forest fires, it has been struck a blow by the fire demon and from all parts of the county comes news of loss of homes, ranches and timber…  Those who went through the thrilling experiences of being caught in the embrace of the fire fiend describe the fires as great sheets of flame which swept before them with the speed of a railroad train.”

The article explained that Sagle and Cocolalla were hard hit.  The Sagle fire that started on Dufort Flat wasn’t under controlled for three days.  Blazes damaged many homes near Blacktail Mountain.  One hundred men were fighting flames east of Granite.  Another burned section was west of Athol, extending down toward Rathdrum.  Two men lost their lives near Cabinet above the Clark Fork River.

Closer to Bayview, fires spread east from Athol.  The farming community of Belmont was hit and the fires moved east up the back side of Bernard Peak.  The entire point of land that is now Farragut State Park burned.  Fires consumed the land from Idlewild Bay to Squaw (Scenic) Bay sparing the Webster cabin but burning a large quantity of cord wood belonging to the Washington Brick and Lime Company.  A Rathdrum Tribune article dated September 2, 1910 stated:  “Wm. Macallister, the ‘Bard of Idlewilde’ asks us to inform all his friends and readers of this paper that ‘Idlewilde’ did not burn in the fierce forest fire of a week ago, although it swept over the island and east shore.  Mac says the fishing is good but we wonder if some are not pretty well smoked, like herring.”

Across the lake more damage was done.  Fire that started at the head of the Little North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River swept down toward Lakeview, but turned north when the flames were three to four miles from town, never making it over the Bunco Divide.  Another fire erupted around Independence Creek near what is now the Magee Ranger Station.  A forest ranger, John Sharkey, overcome by smoke while fighting the Lakeview fire died of pneumonia a few days later.  Other men were badly burned and permanently disfigured.

Frank Scranton wrote about stories he heard from his step-father Paul Sage whose family homesteaded in the Belmont area.  According to these recollections Paul saw the flames coming over Cedar Mountain in August of 1910.  He owned a shingle mill and for several days the men of Belmont fought the fire and saved the mill.  The women and children were loaded onto a wagon and taken to a “good sized clearing near Llewellyn Creek and out of line of the main fire.”  Frank goes on to describe how the flames went over the Sage property and moved east toward Bernard Peak.

Leo Ambrose Payne also mentions the 1910 fires near Lakeview on an audio taped interview recorded in 1978.  He said that the forests, cleared of all the underbrush, promoted great huckleberry picking in later years.  Pend Oreille Forest Service reports of 1914, archived at the North Idaho Museum in Coeur d’Alene, give mention to the fire damage in numerous accounts:

     1—“…headwaters of Barker Creek, 5 miles east of Gibbons Spur subjected to severe fires and the greater part of the timer has been destroyed.”

     2—“Bunker Planting Area heavily burned in 1910 was replanted to yellow pine by the Forest Service.”

     3—”The disastrous burning of a large part of the timber on this watershed a number of years ago had appreciably reduced the flow of the streams.  The Forest Service replanted 840 acres between Barker Creek and Roush Creek in yellow pine and larch; … planted 200 acres between Roush Creek and Sage Creek.”

 References:

Bastian, Caro Lou Weber and Leo Ambrose Payne. Manuscript Group 374. University of Idaho Library Special Collections. Moscow,  ID. audio tapes.

Kresek,  Ray. Fire Lookouts of the Northwest. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1984.

Koch, Elers. “History of the 1910 Forest Fires in Idaho,”  Forest Service Publication, 1915, Coeur d’Alene, ID: Museum of North Idaho files.

Pend d’Oreille Review, 2 August 1910 and 26 August 1910.

Rathdrum Tribune, August 5, 1910 and September 2, 1910.

Scranton, Frank. “A History of the Belmont Area, near Athol, Idaho,”  Museum of North Idaho files, Coeur d’Alene, ID.

Spokane Spokesman Review, August 25, 1917.

U.S. Forest Service reports,  Pend Oreille National Forest, 1914,  Museum of North Idaho files, Coeur d’Alene, ID.

          From Linda Hackbarth's  Bayview and Lakeview